Love is Sacrifice
by Nienna3791
Summary: It does not take death to atone death, but rather, light: the light that burns away the darkness. For Spyfest 2016


**A/N:** *cough* so my finger slipped and I wrote a lot of angst. This is inspired by a scene in _Heir of Fire_ and that time we all thought a certain character died in _Queen of Shadows_ , both by Sarah J. Maas because I'm Throne of Glass trash.

* * *

Maybe it was the taser that tore such a guttural scream from Alex Rider.

Maybe it was because he was soaking wet and the water conducted scalding electricity all over his skin.

Maybe it was the fact that he was completely, utterly alone.

"Your employers deserted you," the man said, the man behind the light who was only a shadow and a voice that promised nothing but pain. "They knew what I was."

Alex gasped as his side was sharply prodded with the taser's muzzle. "And they still left you here."

Closing his eyes, Alex finally allowed himself to fall limply against the shackles that bound him upright. His shoulders screamed in pain but he couldn't stand any longer. Blistered burns covered his legs, some from the tasers and others from the cattle prod, and he knew that they'd soon begin to fester.

It would be a mercy if death came before MI6.

The man in the shadows chuckled. "You know how easy it was to lure you here? Even after everything - your parents, your uncle, your godfather, your Jack- you still think you can save the people you love." footsteps scuffed against the floor. "It is a weakness that I hope to burn out of you."

Alex's stomach lurched and he barely managed to tilt his head to vomit up what little gruel he'd eaten that morning.

"I am the blacksmith," the man said. Lightly, casually. As if he hadn't just tortured Alex within an inch of heart failure. "And you, Alex Rider, will become my sword."

He left.

The door slammed shut.

All was silent but for the creaking of Alex's iron chains. Alex closed his eyes. He didn't want to open them again.

Alex hated himself for fearing the man behind the light. He hated himself for wanting, even just for a second, to say anything, to agree to anything, that would make the pain stop.

"Coward," an all-too-familiar voice hissed into his ear.

Chills ran down Alex's spine. He ground his teeth together. "No," he said, but it came out as a wheeze. "You're dead."

A derisive laugh. "You could have prevented that."

He groaned. Jack's voice, it was always hers. She was the reason he was here in this hell; Jones said that Agent Daniels was captured. It was supposed to be an easy mission, in and out.

Alex agreed. He wanted to save someone because he couldn't save Jack.

He wanted to redeem himself.

And now here he was, treated like cattle, chained to a ceiling that hid in the dark.

 _No I couldn't_ , he wanted to scream. _I was chained!_

But all he could do was stifle cries of pain.

The man behind the light was correct: MI6 had left him. They promised to be on standby. They swore.

They had failed.

For a half a second's breath, Alex was tempted to see if the chains were long enough to wrap around his neck.

Death wasn't as inviting as he thought it would be.

No, he only wanted out.

So he would wait. He would wait until MI6 came to pick him up. He would wait until his body healed enough to escape.

He would survive.

" _Alex._ " It was that soft voice, that broken, impossibly sad voice that he had only heard once before, once when he was lying in the street with blood pumping out of his chest.

It was the voice of a mother who was supposed to be dead.

It was that voice that pushed his mind over the edge until he fell, he was falling, and noise rushed in his ears as he hurtled towards the river in the depths of his soul, the river where people go to die, and suddenly he saw their faces and _remembered_.

His mother. His father. Jack. Ian. Ash, who had betrayed him.

They were immortal, immortal because he loved them and immortal because countless other people all over the world loved them; and they were mortal, mortal because they loved him and mortal because that was what humans were made to be.

Alex understood, then, that death was not the end of someone's life.

He shivered, as if the river was cold, and he was drowning in waves of icy water and couldn't tell if they were real or imagined.

 _Give them anything,_ a woman's voice whispered in his mind. _Anything but your heart._

Tears sprang to Alex's eyes, but not because of pain. _Mum._

Warmth wrapped around his broken and beaten body, seeping inside his bones, lighting the faintest of flames that sputtered within the darkness that he clung to like a shield.

Alex Rider loved. He knew how to love, and that was not weakness, not like the man who held the taser said, not like MI6 thought when they stole the idea of a friend and twisted it into a bargaining chip.

Love was strength. Strength to rise again time after time, courage to let down your guard just enough for someone to enter, and willingness to risk everything to save one person.

He gasped out a shuddering breath. Pain tore through his body.

 _Love is sacrifice_.

Next time, when the door grated open and light trickled in, it fled the flame inside him that slowly burned away his only shield and he clung tight to the faces in his mind, the faces that would live on even as their bodies turned to ash.

When the pain came,

He was not afraid.


End file.
